All-In on AI: How Smart Companies Win Big with Artificial Intelligence
Tom Davenport and Nitin Mittal
Harvard Business Review Press (January 2023)

“By all means let’s be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.”  Richard Dawkins

In The Singularity Is Near (2005), Ray Kurzweil predicts that “convergent, exponential technological trends” are “leading to a transition that would be ‘utterly transformative’ for  humanity.” I was again reminded of that prediction  as I began to read The Singularity Is Nearer in which Kurzweil explains how and why humanity’s “Mellenia-long march toward the Singularity has become a sprint. In the introduction to The Singularity Is Near, I wrote that we were then ‘in the early stages of this transition.’ Now we are entering its culmination. That book was about glimpsing a distant horizon — this one is about the last miles along the path to reach it .”

I offer this information to establish a frame-of reference when sharing my thoughts about Tom Davenport and Nitin Mittal’s brilliant book, All In with AI.

As they explain, “Our focus in this book is on how large firms that existed well before AI are transforming themselves with the help of that technology…The common thread is that they are at the far end of the scale in their spending, planning, strategizing, implementing, and changing with regard to AI technology…Our goal in the rest of these pages is to explore the concept of being all-in on AI and what is required for an organization to get there.”

All senior-level executives must also be all-in with AI. Here is a prediction that Alvin Toffler made in 1970, in Future Shock: “The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

These are among the passages of greatest interest and value to me, also listed to suggest the nature and scope of Davenport and Mittal’s coverage:

o Introduction (Pages 1-8)
o Table 1: AI technology is employed by AI-fueled companies (13)
o Becoming an Organizational Learning Machine (24-27)
o Portrait of an AI Leader, and, Lessons on Leadership (30-34 and 34-37)
o Creating Something New (49-74

o AI-driven ecosystems: Three strategy archetypes (62-66 and 193-194)
o AI-based transformation (66-68)
o Automated machine learning (73-83)
o Building AI Applications Faster and Better (77-83)
o Managing Data for Training and Everything Else  (88-91)

o The General Path to Being AI Fueled (98-100)
o Influencing Customer Behaviors with Data and AI in Insurance (106-107)
o Figure 5-1: Deloitte’s Trustworthy AI Framework  (117)
o Consumer Industries (124-126)
o Energy, Resources, And Industrials Industries (127-131)

o Financial Services Industries (131-135)
o AI at the Cleveland Clinic (148-151)
o Deloitte: From a People-Fueled Organization to a People- and AI-Fueled Organization (163-174)
o Capital One: From an Analytics-Focused Organization to an AI-Focused One (175-178)
o Well: From Scratch to an AI-Fueled Startup (186-190)

Obviously, no brief commentary such as mine can do full justice to the information, insights, and counsel that Tom Davenport and Nitin Mittal provide in this volume. That said, I hope that I have at least indicated why I think so highly of them and of their contributions to global thought leadership.

As you and your colleagues proceed, keep this observation by Warren Buffett in mind: “No matter how great the talent or efforts, some things just take time. You can’t produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.”

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Here are two suggestions while you are reading All-In on AI: First, highlight key passages Also,  perhaps in a notebook kept near-at- hand (e.g. Apica Premium C.D. Notebook A5), record your comments, questions, action steps (preferably with deadlines), page references, and lessons you have learned as well as your responses to head notes and key points posed within the narrative. Also record your responses to specific or major issues or questions addressed or suggested in the material, especially comments at the conclusion of chapters.

These two simple tactics — highlighting and documenting — will facilitate, indeed expedite frequent reviews of key material later.